Month: February 2020

Who is a Jew?

Since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE the world has puzzled over the criteria of what makes a person a Jew. Are Jews an extended family; a clan; a nation; a people; a religion; a race; or can anyone choose to identify himself as a Jew? Is there a distinction between Jews and Judaism?  Does the belief system of the Jewish faith belong only to the Jewish people?  The trees that provided the paper dedicated to those inquiries might well be enough to repopulate the oxygen-generating forests of the world.  On those subjects, we are informed by the Old Testament and the gleanings of history that:

• For 2000 years, ending with the First Century CE, the identity of the Jew was not really in issue. Patrilineal Jewish identity had been more than adequately described in the Torah granted to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai in 1280 BCE and transcribed in the Written Torah brought to the Second Temple by Ezra the Scribe in the fifth century BCE.
• Isaac, and ultimately Jacob, followed in the patrilineal line from Abraham.
• Jacob’s patrilineal line was the formula for the Twelve tribes of Israel, which, coincidentally, did not include his daughter Dinah.
• God’s design of the Jewish people and his gift of the land of Israel followed directly along patrilineal lines.
• Upon the death of the biblical father, his entire estate went to his sons according to Numbers 27 (8-11). “If a man dies, and have no son, then you shall cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter”.
• All biblical identification (naming of Jews) was done patronymically, e.g., Joshua ben (the son of) Nun. It is a formula used today when calling a Jew to the Torah.
• The religious personnel of both holy temples were selected patrilineally, i.e., kohanim (priests) and Levites were identified through the lineage of their fathers, a circumstance which exists even to this day, as an honorarium and in the event of the future construction of a Third Temple.

The Written Torah, by its own text, alleges that the Ten Commandments was written by the ‘finger of God”, Deuteronomy 9 (10). Some believe that the remainder of the Torah had similar authorship, or that it was written by Moses. However, modern authorities suggest that it was the work of four early historians who attempted to assemble and correlate Judaism’s historic events and laws.  Whether by the finger of God, or the efforts of historians devoted to transcribing the word of the Creator, it is a distinction without a difference.  Its text was, and is, accepted by Jews as the history of the Jewish people, the description of Judaism’s sacred design and origin, and the essence of the solemn relationship between the Jewish nation and its God.

Chosen People or Designed People?

Frequent suggestions are made claiming that the Jews are God’s Chosen People.  Nothing could be further from the truth. God did not choose an existing people.  Abram was 70 years old when God first selected and spoke to him.  God chose an older gentleman with a barren wife, Sarah. She was childless until she was 90 years of age, when God arranged for her to have a child.  God did not select or choose a people. He designed one, out of the rootstock of Abram and Sarah, as His agents to fulfill a desired mission.  That mission appeared obvious in Genesis 9 (11), where God covenanted with Noah, his sons and all living creatures (His own creations) that He will never again, through anger, destroy the rest of the human and animal life.   God promised that the appearance of a rainbow in the sky will be a constant reminder to all that He will be mindful of his commitment to abate his total destructive anger. Thus, in the very next chapter, God selects Abram and his wife Sarah as the source of a designed people with a mission. That mission, we discover later, was to disseminate God’s commandments and law to all, through precept and example, and to demonstrate how to live a moral life that would avoid the wickedness that provoked God’s anger, i.e., Tikkun Olam.

The design of God’s agent people appears more than 7 times in the pages of Genesis and Deuteronomy.  It describes a people who are the recipient of a continuum of “Zera”, the Hebrew word for semenal fluid, which fluid originates with Abraham, proceeds through Isaac and Jacob, and continues along patrilineal lines through their male descendents in perpetuity. In the Second Century CE, the Tannaim of the Talmud crudely abandoned that design and substituted matrilineal-ism in its stead. Women do not produce Zera, semen. Was this an outright rejection, by Rabbinical Judaism, of God’s designed people in the written Torah? Did it it say to God: Don’t tell us how Jews are created. We, the rabbis, prefer our own formula. Was it merely coincidental that the 2000 years of “Galut” (The Diaspora of Jewish landless wanderings) started at or about that time?

Why does the “Zera” of the patriarchs initiate the golden thread which weaves the fabric of the Jewish people?  The answer is quite simple.  It is because God, in the Old Testament, repeatedly prescribed it and presumptively designed it to fit within His blueprints of human genetics.

Consider: 

1. In Genesis 12(7), God appears to Abraham (then Abram) and in God’s reference to the land of Canaan tells him, “Unto thy Zera (semen) will I give this land.”
2. In Genesis 17(6-8), God tells Abraham that he will make him exceedingly fruitful and that he will sire kings.  God promises that he will give to Abraham and to Abraham’s Zera (semen) all of the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. 
3. In Genesis 17(10-12), God reminds Abraham of the earlier covenant negotiated between God, Abraham and the Zera (semen) of Abraham and requires that a token of that covenant be represented by the circumcision of every male child. 
4. In Genesis 26(2-4), God confirms to Isaac the covenant with Isaac’s father Abraham.  God promises to make Isaac’s Zera (semen) multiply as the stars of the heaven and in Isaac’s Zera (semen) will all the nations of the earth be blessed. 
5. In Genesis 28(14), God tells Jacob that his Zera (semen) shall be as the dust of the earth.
6. In Genesis 48(4), Jacob, on his death bed, recalls to Joseph God’s promise that he will give the land of Canaan to Jacob’s Zera (semen) for an everlasting possession.
7. In Deuteronomy 34(4-5), God allows Moses, prior to his death, to look at the land to which he has brought the Jewish people and reminds Moses that he has given this land to the Zera (semen) of the Patriarchs.
8. In all of the foregoing biblical references, the Hebrew word Zera is used in a possessive form. Even today, it is translated as Semen (See The Complete English-Hebrew Dictionary (Ruben Alcalay), page 3290). In English translations of Torah text, the word seed is used in lieu of semen, presumptively because it is a bit less evocative. Obvious, although worth mentioning, is the fact that Semen is a fluid that is not produced in the female body.

In multiple Torah references in which God describes the concept of his designed people there are three essential requirements:

1. The People must be lineal descendants of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
2. Their line of descent must derive from the “Zera” (semen) of the patriarchs and their lineal male descendants.
3. Male descendants of the patriarchs must be circumcised on the eighth day following their birth. It is a mandate directed to the very instrument that delivers the semen, which is the thread of Jewish continuum.

Science Illuminates God’s Selection of Semen

Why male semen and not the female ovary? To answer that question, we must first look at what is unique about semen.  It took until 1903 and the brilliant scientist Nettie M. Stevens of Bryn Mawr College to answer that question.  She determined that in the human procreation process the male possesses two types of chromosomes, X and Y. The human female has two copies of the X chromosome.

In the human mating process, the male delivers to the female either an X or a Y chromosome. If a Y is delivered, it initiates a process for the birth of a male child, but the Y chromosome passes unaltered directly to that male child without combining with the X chromosome of the female.  If an X chromosome is delivered by the male in the mating process, that chromosome joins with the X chromosome of the female and the elements of both become the origin of the female child.  Thus, God’s designed Zera process, the patrilineal process in the Torah, allows the Jewish people the continuum of the uniqueness of the patriarchs without being altered by each mating encounter.  If God wanted an agent people, unaltered by the generations of change, this was certainly an effective way to do it. Who had more familiarity with the human reproductive process than the designer himself? The method is totally genetic and does not depend upon how one is reared or upon matrilineal origin. It is as true today as it was during the era of the Patriarchs.

Jews and Judaism Are Not One and the Same

It is important to note that during the biblical times there was no such thing as Judaism. Judaism, as a religion, did not start with the birth of Abraham in 2040 BCE. There were only the Jewish people and their tribal God Jehovah.  During the Second Temple period, 490 BCE to 70 CE, the sages discussed the universality of the Jewish God and his law.  It was one of the issues in conflict between the Sadducee priests, who rejected that notion, and the Pharisee priests, who argued in its favor. It was also an issue between Hillel and Shammai.  Not until Paul, the disciple of Jesus, brought the Tanakh (The Torah, the Prophets, and the Scribes) to an alien non-Jewish population did Judaism appear to have its own independent identity.  In fact, Jews existed for 2000 years before there was a refined notion of Judaism as a separate faith or religion. 

Through honest belief, cogent argument, or brute force, one could be persuaded to the religion of Judaism, its precepts and practices. But a person, not born a Jew could never be so altered as to be genetically converted into a Jew. Clearly, patrilineality, as some have suggested, is not a cabal designed by Jewish men in order to assert masculine domination over the Jewish faith. The rules of procreation, of necessity, preceded Adam and Eve.

A Fractional Jew Does Not Exist

How do Jews of today know whether they are really Jews, or are the result of a consensual union with a Gentile, a rape in a pogrom or by a marauding conqueror?  Even to this day, we rely on our identity, as told by our parents.  That source continues in full force and effect until we learn otherwise, by evidence or science.

It is ironic that some are told, as a result of DNA inquiry, that they are part Jewish, and are provided a fraction to designate the relevant percentage.  Such data, although it appears to be scientific in origin, is without appreciation of the biblical definition of who and what is a Jew.  There are no fractional Jews.  A child born of a Jewish father and a Gentile mother is as Jewish as a child born of a Jewish father and a Jewish mother.  Lamentably, a child born of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father is not Jewish, indeed not Jewish at all.  That father was unable to provide to the union the Zera of the patriarchs necessary to birth a Jewish child.  If the daughter of such a union mates with a Jewish man and has a child, that resultant child is Jewish.

Affirming the notion that Jews and Judaism are separate, but related is the fact that many Jews today claim to be agnostics or atheists.  Yet, they identify themselves as Jews and are vigorous in the pursuit of Jewish community goals, including Zionism.  They are viewed by other Jews, and Gentiles alike, as Jews.

A Gentile can look to Jewish law as an authentic social structure and a viable way of serving one God.  Nothing would prevent him from adopting the Jewish religion and law to his lifestyle.  The Torah does not speak of conversion, and none is required of him.  If he lives amongst Jews he is considered a Ger, Sojourner, with rights and privileges which are totally protected by the Torah. “And if a Ger sojourn with thee in your land, you shall not do him wrong.  The Ger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were Gerim (sojourners) in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19 (33f).  However welcome is the practice of Jewish law and customs by a non-Jewish practitioner, it does not provide that individual with genetic Jewish identity.

An Old Clarity and a New Freedom 

Throughout history, Jewish communities have been selected by Gentiles who, for one reason or another, have chosen to reside in those communities.

Judaism has been enriched by their presence, as in the case of Onkelos, nephew of the Roman Emperor, Hadrian.  He translated the entire Torah into Aramaic, the lingua franca of the era.

While there are still persons who come to Judaism out of religious or moral persuasion, today the vast majority select the Jewish community because of a relationship with a Jew.  All persons enter the Jewish community as a Biblically Protected Class of Sojourners (“Gerim”) entitled to the love, respect, honor and protection of the rest of the Jewish community.

The Torah requires no formal ceremony to achieve the status of the Sojourner.  A conversion ceremony, if desired, would formalize that person’s relationship with Judaism but would not make him or her a Jew.  In a unique and very practical sense, should the relationship that brought them to the community cease, they have the freedom to leave Judaism or to remain, as they choose. Jews, who are born Jews from the instant of conception, can select other religions, or even atheism, but they never stop being Jews.

During Biblical Times Marriages by Jewish Males with Non-Jewish Females were Not Infrequent and Did Not Breed Gentile Children

Historically, according to Torah, if your father were a Jew, you were accepted as a Jew, whether or not your mother was Jewish.  Four of Jacob’s sons, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, were issue of Bilah and Zilpah, the Egyptian handmaidens of Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel.  They were not only Jews, but they represented the originators of four of the tribes of Israel.  Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, was married to an Egyptian woman by the name of Asenath.  She bore him two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.  Inasmuch as Joseph became part of the Egyptian hierarchy, his sons took his tribal place and were identified as half tribes in Israel even though their mother was not a Jewess.

Moses was married to Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest and to a Nubian woman by the name of Tharbis.  Neither of his wives were Jews.  Assuredly history does not proclaim that their issue was Gentile.  King David and King Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, many from alliances with neighboring tribes.  No one has suggested that their children were Gentile.  King David’s great grandmother was Ruth, a Moabite whose children were fathered by Boaz, a Jew.  Is there anyone who would suggest that King David was not Jewish?

A single universal fact made all of these children Jews: their fathers were Jews.  Most often, during biblical times, a non-Jewish mother simply took residence with her husband in the Jewish community, was accepted, and her progeny became Jewish by virtue of their Jewish father.

The Rise of Rabbinical Judaism, Matrilineal-ism and a Second Torah

With the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism was in for a significant sea change.  No longer could Jews bring sacrifices of food animals at the temple in the manner in which they had traditionally served their God.  They felt obliged, by the mandate of the Torah, to congregate and read the law (Torah).  In lieu of the sacrifices formerly used, they were left with communications to their God in the form of verbal prayer.  The Pharisees, who perforce of temple destruction were unemployed, became the authority at such meetings and eventually identified themselves as Rabbis.  With their assistance, the verbal prayers became prepared and stylized.  With this evolution came the development of Rabbinical Judaism.

While the obvious prescription for such congregations was to function within the reasonable interpretation of the Written Torah, the Pharisee/Rabbis found that difficult to do.  The Torah itself had no provision for amendment. By its terms, in Deuteronomy 4 (2), the Written Torah rejected any additions or subtractions to its text.

Rabbinical Judaism found it impossible to be limited to the one world of the Written Torah, and created a totally new additional world called “Leolam Habah”.  In that world, it created the notion of life, after death, so that those who were zealous in following the rabbinical “Halacha” could find the reward, which they felt that they richly deserved.  They created the Talmud, which was principally composed of three sources: (1)The Mishna, a code which sought to preserve and codify the opinions of the Second Temple’s sages; (2) The Midrash, a more earthy collection of thoughts, stories, and opinions relating to Jewish history and (3) the Gamora, which contained later reflections and opinions of multiple rabbis on the laws of the Mishna.  

While much of the Talmud expressed conflicting religious opinions, it was not without some well-reasoned insights into Jewish law.  Institutional Jewish groups outside of rabbinical Judaism, such as the Karites, the Samaritans, and others would occasionally look to the Talmud, but never held themselves in any way bound to it.  Their orientation was to the Written Torah, or in the case of the Samaritans an earlier version of that Torah. 

A real problem developed regarding Rabbinical Judaism, when the Rabbis became so enamored with their own creation that they dubbed the Talmud the “Torah Shel Bial Pe,” the Oral Torah and claimed that it originated from Mount Sinai 1750 years earlier and held it to be of equal dignity with the Written Torah.

As noted, the Written Torah rejected any additions or subtractions to its text, but the Talmud could barely restrain itself in expanding simple text to the point of abject distortion.  The Written Torah’s prohibition against “seething a kid in the milk of its mother,” Exodus 34 (25), was construed by the Talmud in such a manner as to disregard the familial relationship of the two animals and their single species of origin.  The Talmud ended up prohibiting consuming milk from a cow with the meat of a lamb, or even a chicken that gives no milk. On the other hand, it allows the consumption of a chicken together with its eggs.

The Talmud enacted a plethora of religious restrictions and over-the-top interpretations of biblical provisions, which constituted a religious confinement, even within the gates of the ghettos in which they were obliged to live.  The related “Shulchan Oruch” instructs the observant Jew as to which shoe to put on first in the morning and which hand to be used for personal cleanliness.  Expansions and add-on rules such as these are clearly in violation of Deuteronomy 4 (2) of the written Torah. Two Torahs that have two distinct sets of laws imply the existence of a circumstance that no Jew can endure, i.e., two different deities.

Matrilineal-ism – Judaism’s Poison Pill

Of all of the departures by Rabbinical Judaism from the Written Torah, the abandonment of patrilineal-ism in favor of matrilineal-ism is by far the worst. Even today, 1800 years after the Talmud’s disastrous switch, acknowledged Torah scholars such as Shaye J. D. Cohen, Littaur Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, in his landmark work entitled “The Beginnings Of Jewishness” examined all possible rationales for the substitution of matrilineal-ism for patrilineal-ism and concluded:

“The matrilineal principle has had enormous social consequences for modern Jews, and it is easy to believe that the rabbis in antiquity must have been compelled by some societal needs to institute it. But there is little evidence to support this belief. Intermarriage was not a severe problem in rabbinic society, and even if it was, the logical response would have been the institution of a bilateral system, requiring both a Jewish father and a Jewish mother for an offspring to be reckoned Jewish by birth. Perhaps elsewhere the rabbis were legislators, listening attentively to the demands of their constituency. In their statement of the matrilineal principle, however, the rabbis were philosophers, and like most philosophers, they did not always live in the real world.”

Matrilineal-ism is a Tragic Blow to Judaism.  If Left Unchecked, it Can be the End of 4000 Years of Jewish Primacy.                                                

The Land of Israel:  God did not give the land of Israel to the Hebrew patriarchs.  He sent them there to sojourn for a period, but promised the land to their “Zeracha”, the lineal line, through the continuum of their male semen.  Nowhere in God’s pledge of the land does it reference the word children, daughters, descendants or other language that would include anyone other than the seminal lineage described.  By doing that, in a patriarchal environment, He was assured that the lineage of the people would retain the character of the patriarchs as He designed it.

Since the change to matrilineal-ism in the Second Century CE, we are indeed a different people. Under matrilineal-ism, the male line of semen no longer creates a continuum of Jews. That is especially true in the current era of 58% rate of intermarriage. Since we have altered the formula of who is a Jew from that provided in the Torah, it has changed the composition of the Jewish people. Are we, matrilineal descendants, still legally entitled to the land of Israel? Can we switch beneficiaries on God?

Conversion:  The written Torah invites non-Jews to sojourn in the Jewish community, it protects them, and assures a quality of life like Jews. However, it does not authorize genetic conversion of the Gentiles to Jews, even if that were possible.  It is hard to believe that the Tannaim of the Talmud’s Mishna fully perceived the deleterious effect of the rejection of the Written Torah’s patrilineal-ism in favor of matrilineal-ism.

Did they wake up one day and realize that transition to matrilineal-ism was determining that four full tribes and two half- tribes of Israel were non-Jewish in origin?  Did they understand that they were rendering the children of Jacob with the concubines, and the children of Joseph, Moses, and of the many foreign wives and concubines of King David and King Solomon as non-Jews, a result that would not have occurred under patrilineal-ism.

Somewhere along the line, the early authors of the Talmud must have perceived the need for corrective action, if matrilineal-ism were to survive. Anxious minds apparently came up with the notion of Rabbinical conversion.  Previously, conversion had not been necessary, as those Gentiles morally persuaded to the Jewish laws, precepts and practices could enter the Jewish community as a respected “Gerim”.  But, a formal ceremony of conversion could serve as a celebratory event for that transition.

It is doubtful that the Rabbinical schools of that era, and of now, provide courses on how to change the human genetics.  What Rabbis can’t do, in order to ameliorate the folly of matrilineal Judaism, is to genetically change a Gentile into a Jew.  The genetic heritage established at conception, even today, is immutable.  While a rabbi can provide the education necessary to introduce a Gentile wife into a normative Jewish lifestyle, the rabbi is unable to bestow upon the issue of the Gentile wife the Zera of Judaic continuity, unless, of course, it is provided by a Jewish husband. If a Gentile wife is converted and subsequently divorces her Jewish husband, does she breed Jewish children in the union with a new Gentile husband?

Boomerang Rabbinical Adventurism

There are approximately fourteen million Jews in the world today. Ashkenazi Jews comprise more than 80% of world Jewry. The remaining Jews are represented by the Sephardic Jewish Community (Jews from the Iberian Peninsular Jewish lineage) and Mizrahim (Middle Eastern Jews).

While all Jews are genetically related to each other, there are differences. Sephardic Jews have perceptively darker hair and skin coloring and there are significant differences in the diseases that impact Ashkenazis, but not the other Jewish populations. These differences were uniquely studied by David Goldstein PhD. from the Center for Genetic Anthropology at the University College in London; Doron Behar and Professor Karl Skorecki of the Technion medical faculty at the Rambam Medical Center in Israel; and Prof. Martin Richard of the Archaeogenetics Research Group of the University of Huddersfield in England.

Their findings demonstrated that the male lineage of Ashkenazi Jews, based on Y chromosome studies, traced back to the Middle East. However, the female mitochondrial origins are most closely related to southern and western European lineages.

Their findings suggest that when Jewish men migrated into Europe, most likely following defeat at the hands of the Romans, they procreated with European women. Doron Behar was able to determine that 40% of current Ashkenazi population is descendent from just four indigenous, non-Jewish women.

If one follows the rabbinical policy of matrilineal-ism, multiple millions of Ashkenazi Jews, are not Jews at all. On the other hand, if one follows the prescription of patrilineal-ism provided in the Torah, there is no problem at all, i.e., since the fathers were Jews, the children of those unions were also Jews.

Jewish Denominations Disagree as to What is a Valid Conversion

Further complicating the issue of Jewish identity, is the lack of any uniform standard for conversion, which is essential even for the erroneous matrilineal identification of a Jew. Orthodox Judaism which has primacy in Israel and elsewhere, recognizes only conversion done by certain of its rabbis.  The various Rabbinical Jewish denominations have different standards for conversion which often are not given full faith and credit by the other denominations. The ascendancy of matrilineal-ism, its ineffectiveness, and its multiple complications make the determination of who is a Jew as clear and precise as a Jackson Pollock painting. 

The clear and present danger of such confusion, and the need for immediate remedial action, result in the loss of both personal and functional Jewish identity. God’s design of the people and its responsibility for Tikkun Olam simply will stop become another item of fungibility in the mass of humanity that inhabits the earth.

Matrilineal-ism has been in effect in Rabbinical Judaism for over 1800 years. What makes its removal now so critical?  In a world in which Jews married other Jews, a world without significant intermarriage, the deleterious effect of matrilineal-ism did not become apparent. In the diaspora Jewish communities of Europe and the Middle East, intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles seldom occurred, it was an anathema. Marriage to a Jew could even constitute a punishable offense to Gentiles. The liberalism of the Twentieth Century, after Hitler, changed all of that. Matrilineal-ism was like an unexploded World War II bomb that burrowed itself the ground, only later to spontaneously explode in the next Century. The Jewish explosion of matrilineal-ism took place when more than 50% of all American Jews began to marry Gentile spouses. Good wine improves with age. Bad ideas do not.

The Plight of Jewish Children

The Torah of our forefathers, the Written Torah, still survives in its original scroll form in the ark of every Jewish synagogue in the world.  Under that Torah, children born of a Jewish father are Jews.  Today, tens of thousands of Jewish children born to Jewish fathers and Gentile mothers are denied their Jewish heritage, cast out from the bosom of Judaism and told that they can convert to Judaism, like any other Gentile.  Often, in Jewish institutions of learning, they are denied a Jewish education because their mother is not Jewish.  It is a tragedy for the children, their parents, Judaism and the Torah.

Reform Judaism, after its ranks swelled by intermarriage, felt compelled to add to its matrilineal-ism a modified version of patrilineal-ism.  Essentially, it provided that children born of Jewish fathers and Gentile mothers could claim Jewish identity if the children were reared in a Jewish home.  While that constituted a mini-step in the right direction, it failed to leave the wrong direction. How a person has absolutely nothing to do with whether is a Jew.  Jewish identity is established at the instant of conception. Fairness and equality are inbred in the Jewish spirit.  Jews are often at the forefront of the battle against disparity, prejudice and unfairness.  Yet, there are circumstances, which by their very nature, are not adaptable to parity.  Not all numbers are divisible by 2 resulting in, whole integers. We cannot change a male fetus into a female fetus simply because we have four other boys. Not all countries have equal distribution of gold and other valuable minerals, and not all sexes can produce semen which is the golden thread of Jewish identity.

Conclusion

The origin of the Jewish people is disclosed in the Written Torah. It starts with God’s selection of Abram and his barren wife, Sarah. The Torah describes how God intervenes to grant Sarah, at 90 years of age, a male child, Isaac. Isaac fathers Jacob, and the patrilineal succession of the patriarchs is complete. No other historical documents confirm or deny that succession. Without the Written Torah, the Jewish people, do not exist.

On seven different occasions, the Written Torah prescribes the manner in which the patriarchs will grow into a great and populous nation. That procedure occurs through the continuous thread of patriarchal semen from father to son through each generation. The scientific insights to that process were disclosed in 1903 by Nettie Stevens of Bryn Mawr College. She revealed how the Y chromosome passes directly through the mother to the male child. The father’s X chromosome, which signals the birth of a female child joins with the mother’s X chromosome to create that child. It is a simple elegant formula for the unaltered continuity of a designed people.

That natural design was used by default to identify the origin of Jews from the beginning until the rise of Rabbinical Judaism shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Tannaim, early authors of the Talmud’s Mishna, for some reason, which even escapes the scholars of today, abandoned the Torah’s natural process of patrilineal-ism. They substituted the mother, whose body can provide no semen as the source of the Jewish child. It is the functional equivalent of trying to open the lock on your front door with a pillow. It simply can’t work. The disastrous effects of the Rabbinical alteration of the written Torah by the substitution of matrilineal-ism include:

1. The loss of the patriarchal continuum in the creation and identification of a Jewish child.
2. The erosion of the legal biblical entitlement to the land of Israel because of the alteration of the designee beneficiary.
3. The corruption of the Jewish genetic pool by the legalization of unauthorized semenal lines.
4. The creation of a class of “fractional Jews”.
5. The attempt to ameliorate the deleterious effect of matrilineal-ism by offering multiple confusing standards for conversion, which by its very nature is genetically incapable of resolving the issue.
6. By denying Jewish children, born of the Zera of Jewish fathers, their birthright and their identity as Jews thus submitting them to be absorbed by other cultures, and other gods.
7. By creating matrilineal-ism, a false and fraudulent rule of Jewish origin, millions of Ashkenazi Jews, whose origin traces back to four Gentile mothers, are, in fact, disenfranchised as Jews.

Like global warming, it has taken a long time for the real dangers of matrilineal-ism to affect the Jewish community and to come into focus. As with global warming, if you fail to address the challenge, the creeping muddy waters of Jewish identity will cover a 4000-year-old people and its God-prescribed mission.